Speaking of the Indians ...remember them? Right now they aren't exactly smoking. Well, actually one of them is, but enough about Chris Perez's dog.

Your 2013 Cleveland Indians went into their game in Texas on Tuesday night oh-for-the-road trip and oh-for-more-than-a-week. They've gone from "oh yeah" to "oh no" faster than you can say "uh-oh."

At this point, we're not really sure if this is just a speed bump or a brick wall; a hiccup or a hacking cough; a slump or a collapse.

What we do know is the numbers are not good.

Entering Tuesday's game, the Indians had lost eight in a row, 9 of 10, 14 of 17 and since May 23 their record was 4-16.

In those 16 losses, they were outscored, 109-48.

The best argument for this merely being a speed bump and not a brick wall: During their 4-16 freefall, the Indians have played six teams who at the start of play Tuesday were a combined 64 games over .500.

In other words, all of these losses have come against the filet mignon, not the hamburger helper, of the major leagues.

So although this is a really, really bad stretch, this doesn't feel like a collapse, although we've all been numbed by the Indians' ineptitude before, so who knows for sure?

Certainly the team's recent history offers a couple of examples of collapses that walked like a duck, quacked like a duck and were clearly instances when the Indians forgot to duck.

For those examples you have to go all the way back to ...um, let's see here ...oh yeah, last year and the year before to find collapses that would make any cheap lawn chair proud.

Last year, the Indians were in first place from April 25 through May 28, and again from June 19 through June 23, and they had a winning record as late as July 26, when they were 50-49.

However, from 50-49 until the end of the year, they were a Hindenburgesque 18-45. That's a winning percentage of .286, which over a 162-game season would translate to a record of 46-116.

From July 26 to Aug. 31 last year, the Indians were 5-28. That's a winning percentage of .156, which over a 162-game season would translate to a record of 25-137.

Now that's a collapse.

In 2011, the Indians had a record of 30-15 on May 23 and were in first place by seven games. The Indians were in first place from April 7 through June 13. For the season, they were in first place for more days (88) than they weren't in first place (76).

But from 30-15, they went 50-67 the rest of the way and finished with a losing record (80-82).

That same season, in Boston, the Red Sox missed the playoffs because they went 7-20 in September. That collapse cost Manager Terry Francona his job, and because it did, Francona eventually was hired by the Indians. Francona is now trying to steer his new team out of or around a midseason crater that threatens to undo all the feel-good the Indians established before they disappeared into this current sinkhole.

Nevertheless, in the classic baseball definition, this is not a collapse. Not yet, anyway.

It's not a collapse because there's still enough of the season remaining to make up the ground lost during this traipse through the baseball desert.

After Tuesday night's game, the Indians still have 98 games left in the season. That's plenty of time to, if nothing else, climb back into the wild-card picture.

As bad as that 4-16 stretch was, it's still only 20 games. That's only one-eighth of the major-league season. Of course, if it's the final one-eighth of the season, then it could in fact become a collapse. Francona's 2011 Red Sox lost 20 games in September, and that was a collapse. These 20 games, given where they have fallen in the 162-game major-league season, are recoverable for the Indians.

There is a safety net in those 98 remaining games.

The good teams, the playoff teams, are able to bounce back from fractionally minor segments of poor play in a major-league season. Collapses happen to teams that are exposed through the length of the 162-game season as the mediocrities that they are.

These Indians are still-to-be defined in 2013, and it's up to them. They either bounce back from this and become significant, or they become just another team whose season was torpedoed by the "C" word.